Stanley, Resonators to perform four shows at Tangier

by mike lesko | ReporterPublished: March 28, 2014 12:00AM

Wales and London were the unlikely locations where members of the Michael Stanley Band recorded their "Cabin Fever" album, released in 1978.

"It was our first album with Arista Records," Stanley told Record Publishing Co. "[Arista boss] Clive Davis had set us up with [producer] Bob Ezrin, who had worked with Alice Cooper and Pink Floyd. We were all set to go [to Toronto], and all a sudden, it fell apart. I still to this day have no idea what happened.

"So Clive hooked us up with this young, unknown [at the time] producer who lived in England -- Robert John 'Mutt' Lange," he said. "He liked to work at a studio called Rockfield in Monmouth, Wales.

"It was a studio that had living quarters there," he said. "You actually lived there. It was cool because you couldn't escape it. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, but there was nothing there. That was where the whole 'Cabin Fever' concept came in."

Stanley said sheep were seemingly everywhere in the countryside.

"We were stranded in the middle of Wales for almost a month, then we finished it up in London," he said.

Stanley and the Resonators will perform at the Tangier, 532 West Market St., Akron, for four shows on April 4-5 and 11-12 at 8:30 p.m. It will be their 21st consecutive year performing there.

During their Tangier shows, they may play "Baby If You Wanna Dance" and "Misery Loves Company," the band's two most memorable songs from "Cabin Fever." Both are high energy tunes.

"We still do 'Baby If You Wanna Dance' fairly often," Stanley said. "We haven't done 'Misery' for a long time, although it used to be a big staple of our set. I saw some [past] live tapes [recently]. It was a real high energy thing at the start of the set. We did three high energy songs in a row to get the crowd going."

While in Wales, Stanley had some memorable moments. He sent his road crew on a 7-hour round trip to a McDonald's to purchase Big Macs.

"I love England. For as many things as England has going for it, the cuisine is not one of them. We were craving something American, and that was the closest McDonald's," said Stanley, a weekday afternoon and Saturday morning host on WNCX 98.5-FM radio.

There was a language barrier, too.

"Welsh people obviously speak Welsh, so you might as well be in Russia [in terms of communicating]," he said. "You don't know what anybody's talking about.

"But the trip was great," he said. "I enjoyed the process of making that record. I had my 30th birthday in a castle. You can't do that in Akron, Canton or Cleveland."

Stanley said he hasn't been to London in about 10 years.

"I've heard it's changed a lot, but London is London," he said. "I like places where I can walk around. In every corner, there's history and something different. The people were nice. As long as you didn't starve to death, you were OK."

The Cabin Fever album cover was one of his few where Stanley had no beard.

"I had a perm, too," he said, chuckling. "I was going through some life changes. I was turning 30."